Crazy
by herointhecrowd
Summary: Loony Luna Lovegood is not as crazy as she seems. But after all, everyone loses their mind sometimes. Rolf just has to prove he's worth losing it for.


**Author's Note: **No, world, I have not given up on my second generation fic. I'm not even really supposed to be writing THIS. I leave for Europe in a few hours, and I SHOULD be packing. But when Luna Lovegood beckons, one can't turn away. :) So, bare with me. Updates will be up in a few weeks for my other fic, if not this week if I get a bit of free time while exploring Italy. So, enjoy this little one shot that stole my focus.

**Disclaimer: **Bull shit I own HP. I wish.

Luna wanted many things from her very abnormal life. She wanted travel, and adventure. Perhaps that was why she had taken so well to Harry Potter and his very peculiar bunch of friends. She had heard from Ginny how very adventurous the bunch of them were that she simply could not help herself when, through her swirly decryption glasses, she saw a hole into which she could wiggle her way into.

She wanted knowledge. Luna, at her core, was a very stereotypical Ravenclaw. Her mind was hungry in every sense of the word, and it was upon this hunger that she based her thirst for new discoveries that other's were too logical to believe. Her pursuit of this information was so pure that not even logic could cloud her dreamy vision.

She wanted food. Luna very much liked the idea of food. It was less that she was obsessed and more that she was fascinated. She had tended her mother's garden years after her passing, fueling herself on the prospect of new and odd produce that she could mix into the dishes that she would create for her father. When Luna left home to begin her work as a field researcher in the study of new magical creature for an organization based out of Bulgaria, she was thrilled at the idea of traveling to distant lands to immerse herself in the culture and the food that they would supply.

She wanted joy. In the years so soon after the war, even Luna found it hard to keep a dreamy smile on her face. As Ronald had once pointed out to her, she was more removed from the world than a Muggle would be in the middle of the World Cup. However, watching the horror that wrought her father at his betrayal of her dear friend Harry was a bit taxing. They all changed after the war, even Loony Luna Lovegood.

But Luna Lovegood did not want to be married. It seemed a bit conventional, if you asked her. Of course, she had her own virtues against the binding vows of marriage, elaborated upon the idea that once you shared a marital bed with someone, a special sort of emotionally fueled maggots would take residency in one's ear. That simply did not seem appealing in the slightest.

Even as Luna attended each of the weddings of her dear friends, she simply couldn't be bothered with the idea of marriage. At Harry and Ginny's wedding, where she wore the lavender bridesmaid's dress beside Hermione and one of Ginny's teammates, she brushed away Hermione's misty tears, whispering, "If they begin to act a bit funny, simply cleanse their bed with a sturdy Scourging Drought and feed them honey for three days." Hermione replied with a soft squeeze of her friend's hand.

When Hermione herself walked the aisle not a year and a half later, Luna once again found herself in the lineup alongside her friend. This time, however, no one seemed to be crying, though Ronald seemed very near. She made a mental note to later pay her final respects. It seemed as though Hermione and Ronald had already shared a bed many a time, and that his case was especially advanced.

Even Neville, who she had taken up a bit of an older brother's opinion of her after a tremendously horrific date a few months after the Final Battle, was married before Luna. At the reception, Luna found herself drifting near the ice covered pond with a drink in her hand. Neville, blushed with Firewhiskey and brandishing what looked to be his umpteenth Butterbeer, snuck up behind her, tapping her strongly on the shoulder. She smiled lazily up at him.

"Why, hullo Neville. It seems you've been married."

Chuckling tipsily, Neville replied, "I thought so. Could've been a bit foggy if I'd been wrong, eh?"

She gave a tinkling laugh, turning her attention back to the pond. He watched her, a goofy grin on his now rather burly appearing face. His short stent with the Aurors had not been forgotten, and he was without doubt now one of the most well-built Herbology professors Hogwarts had ever seen. "You should get married, Lu. It'd be good for you, you know?"

"I must disagree, Neville. You see, a very much prefer my ear canals as they are at the present, rather than the catastrophe that can occur with marriage." She yanked quite suddenly on his ear lobe, peering into the cavern with him, "Though it seems to me that perhaps you might survive. Your ears are quite strong, you know."

Blushing and rubbing his festering ear, Neville muttered confusedly, "Er… Thanks. I think it was because they were so much bigger when I was a kid."

She giggled, then patted his shoulder affectionately, "Good luck. Your bride will be here shortly."

As Luna turned away to join a few of the friends she remembered from her Hogwarts days, sure enough, Hannah walked up behind Neville moments later and wrapped her arms around him, dragging him back to the dance floor. He couldn't be happier than to join her.

So the world had come to terms with it. Luna Lovegood simply did not want to get married, and that was all right.

Well, all except one particular part of the world.

Rolf Scamander was a solid five years older than her, and quite frankly, from the moment he saw her, he knew she was the one. While he had never been one to truly buy the idea of true love, to his credit, his was most likely caused by the fact that he had met her while she assisted him in his study of an Arctic strand of Blineybeats in Greenland.

And, if Luna was being honest with herself, he was quite handsome. Who wouldn't find a Greek, olive skinned, chocolate haired thirty-year-old positively entrancing? Luna Lovegood was many things, but crazy was not one of them.

From that moment on, they were very close. She couldn't say that dating was an accurate description. She had yet to sleep with him, and she felt very blunt about such behavior. Brief, albeit feverous, kisses did not seem to be a defining quality of one's relationship to her. And until they had shared a bed, they would not technically be having a romantic tryst, in her opinion. And they would not share a bed, Luna reasoned, because she did not think her ears were strong enough for an infestation.

Two years after their first meeting, it would be this excuse that Luna would use to turn Rolf down.

"You mean you won't marry me because we haven't had sex yet, Luna?" Rolf stared at her with a look so incredulous, he appeared to have entirely shifted his molecular being.

"Precisely. And you are aware of why we have yet to share a bed."

Shaking his head and threading his fingers through his hair, he chuckled warmly. "I'm well aware, love. But have you stopped to consider that perhaps the infestation would not be so bad?"

Truthfully, Luna had not considered that at all. "Well, I suppose that is a plausible theory."

He grinned, running his fingertips along the curve of her throat. He loved Luna Lovegood very much, and he was very eager to find out if there was truth in her last name. She was tender and dreamy. She never fought with him. They discussed everything as two intellectuals, but when he kissed her, it had nothing to do with intellect. He had seen her passionate. He had seen the scars the war had left her. He had watched her care for her father as he tried desperately to rehabilitate himself. He had remembered her being so young in his final years at Hogwarts, off-putting and, well, loony. But Luna had grown, grown in his arms and in his eyes. He had loved her every moment of every day, and he was determined to call her his wife.

That night, Rolf convinced Luna to go to bed with him. And if Luna was being honest with herself, he was _fantastic_. As she fell asleep feeling much more on fire than any creature had ever accidentally set her, Luna thought that perhaps Rolf was right. Perhaps the infestation would not be so bad. Still, she made sure when she settled her body against his for the night, she was wearing earmuffs, just as a safety precaution. Luna Lovegood was many things, but she was not crazy.

While Rolf had seemingly won a very important battle, he had yet to win the war. Two months later, he would once again find himself on his knee. This time, however, her response was much less logical.

"Rolf, I cannot marry you."

He sighed, snapping the box closed and fiddling with his hair as he did when he was nervous or frustrated. "Care to explain to me why?"

She watched him for a very long moment. And little by little, if only for that short amount of time, the dreaminess in Luna's eyes began to peel away. Nothing was left but silvery blue eyes.

Her whole life, Luna Lovegood had been loony. She had been different. People had pushed her away. While it was not necessarily ideal, it did serve as a rather handy defense mechanism. She wasn't quite sure that anyone outside of her very tight group of friends, made up of only four or five people, had any idea that she was not so loony at all.

Luna was so good at being a secret, she managed to stay secretive even from herself. And watching him there on one knee, staring at her with beautiful, questioning eyes frightened her. Sharing a bed with him frightened her. She was suddenly very aware of how close they were, how well he knew her. She was very aware that marriage was in fact the track she had accidentally found herself on.

It was in that moment that Luna realized that she was only mildly afraid of the maggots (the prospect of foreign creatures in her ears still was not entirely appetizing) and was more afraid of intimacy itself. She was terrified of the idea of laying beside a man who knew every inch of her, terrified of the prospect of having to actually let her shield down. Her eyes began to water.

"You don't understand. I can't let you in that way." And with that, she turned on her heel and began to walk away, the sound of her radish earrings jingling against her jaw all that Rolf had to hold on to.

But Rolf wasn't about to let the most wonderful woman that had ever enter his life walk out of it just that easily.

He reached for her, wrapping long fingers around her wrist and pulling her back against his stomach. "Who's stopping you, Luna?"

She began to shake, tears tumbling down her cheeks now. She hadn't remembered a time she had been so emotional in years. Her resolve crumbled. "Because Rolf, because I love you and it's scary, isn't it? I can deal with a dead mother and a war that keeps me up at night and my father slowly loosing his mind and watching with longing as all of my friends have their children and their absolutely beautiful but I can't have that, don't you see Rolf? I can't have you. Because I'm just loony aren't I? That's all anyone has ever seen me as, Loony Lovegood and it was so much easier to distance myself from them, all of them, than to feel close to you because you understand, don't you? You understand me. And that's positively horrific. I don't know what I really am sometimes and it would be unfair to launch that upon you like a rabid Nargle, and it just wouldn't work but losing you now would hurt far less than losing you then. Because marrying you, sharing that intimacy would be the craziest thing I've ever done. I'm not all that loony Rolf; I'm not that crazy at all!"

She sobbed silently, her head turned down to the snow covered ground. She didn't dare look up at him.

Rolf, in all of his incredibly Greek masculinity, smiled mistily. He put his two fingers under Luna's chin and pressed his forehead against hers. And then, Rolf Scamander whispered the two craziest, looniest, most perfect words Luna Lovegood had ever heard in her whole life.

"Everyone goes a little crazy sometimes, love. You're just as crazy as the rest of us."

And when she kissed him, hard and strong and fulfilling, her heart thudding in her body, her blood rushing in a way that was entirely not rational, she thought perhaps marriage wasn't so unattractive after all.

Years later, as Lysander sat beside the lake with his best friend and love interest, Lily Potter, Luna and Rolf couldn't help but smile. Lysander was grinning goofily at the young sixteen year old girl, blushing heavily with the joy of new love. Luna watched as Lily giggled at whatever comment her son had made, somewhere between frustratedly challenged and blissfully enamored. The young redhead leaned over, kissing him gently on the cheek, before grabbing his hand and pulling him up from the ground, begging to be chased. And chase he did.

"He's a crazy one, our son," Rolf murmured, squeezing his wife's shoulder so that she was all that much closer to his body. After all these years, she still seemed to fit perfectly there.

"Well, darling, we're all a bit crazy sometimes." She leaned over, kissing his chin affectionately and imagining a life full of happiness for her sons and their respective lovers, just as Rolf had given her.

Because Luna Scamander was many things. She was adventurous and brilliant and fascinating and strong and simply wonderful. And even without a shield of insanity, Luna was perfectly crazy, and that was entirely perfect for her husband.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I positively love Luna Lovegood and the complexity of her mind. As usual, you all have my love.


End file.
